


Celebrity Episode

by theantikrist



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 02:02:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15475041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theantikrist/pseuds/theantikrist
Summary: Undercover Boss offers Tim to be a guest on their show. He agrees.





	Celebrity Episode

**Author's Note:**

> haha i got this idea from the post by forwhateveryouwant on tumblr

Tim isn’t really sure about it when the press management of Undercover Boss emails his secretary with an offer for him to star in their celebrity episode. He’d think that he’s famous enough, both as Tim Drake, poor orphaned son of well known businessman Jack Drake, but also as the adopted son of billionaire Bruce Wayne that anyone would recognize him. 

Not only that, but he isn’t sure what he would do to if he found out what employees really got up to around Wayne Enterprises. Tim understands that a bunch of vigilantes running around rooftops in tights and masks isn’t enough to save the corruption and poverty riddling Gotham. Bruce made sure that his company hired ex convicts and barely getting by single parents. What would he do? Fire them? And let them go back to streets and have them do who knows what to keep the income going? 

He stares at the email that his secretary, Jamie, forwarded to him, fingers hovering over the keyboard of his laptop, ready to fire away with a polite rejection, when the door swings open. Steph strides in with a cheerful grin and Jamie stumbles into the doorway behind her, half panicked and half apologetic. 

“I’m so sorry, sir,” she said frantically as Steph plopped down in one of the seats in front of his new desk. “I tried explaining that she needs an appointment before meeting with you, but she walked past me. and-“

“It’s fine,” Tim dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Can you close the door please?”

Jamie looks shocked for a moment, but the nods and shuts the door with a click. Steph leans forward and picks a green lollipop from the mug of candy on his desk and pops it into her mouth. 

“She’s new,” she observed. “What happened to Carla?”

“Maternity leave,” he said simply. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but why are you here? Is something wrong? Is there an emergency? I can get Tam to substitute for me if-“

“Tim, chill. I’m just checking up on you. We haven’t talked outside of our night lives in a while and this is the only time I have outside of my classes all week so- ta da, I’m here. Talk to me.”

The tension that started to grow in his shoulders was relieved. “Oh. Undercover Boss wants me to be on their show.”

“What? Cool! You’re gonna say yes, right?”

“You know I can’t. This show is about exposing people and my employees have families to support and I can’t just fire them.” 

“You don’t have to fire them,” she says. Tim can see the gears turning in her head. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I’m saying that it’s not then you have to expose. Go for the higher ups, y’know. Unmask the corruption in the Gotham elites. Screw the one percent.”

“I’m the one percent.”

“I know.”

“Bruce is very careful about who he hires,” he counters. 

“It’s been a while since Bruce ran the company and you were busy getting stabbed in the desert for a while.”

He considers her words. It’s a novel idea, one that might work, but wouldn’t it just be bad publicity on his part? A janitor being rude in passing to a client is one thing, but if a board member is found embezzling funds, Wayne Enterprise business could be hurt. 

“Well, I couldn’t just expose corruption in my own company. That’d be stupid,” he thinks aloud. “But... if I use it as a publicity stunt to start revealing what’s going on in the Gotham upper class, then that’d be something.”

“So you wanna turn your own scandal into some sort of Robin Hood reveal?” Steph asks amusedly, the corner of her mouth twitching up. 

He nods. 

“You’re an evil genius.”

“Thank you.”

So he ends up sending an agreement email instead. There are meetings about it and contracts and even more emails until the day of infiltration actually comes. As the day drew nearer, the plan seemed more surreal and much more nerve wracking. Vigilante work was much more his style. 

After being dressed in a white button down shirt and black slacks, a group of make up artists ushered him into a chair and went to work. They went the extra mile and gave him colored contacts as well, turning his green eyes into dark brown ones. He was given a brown wig as well and the make up changed his facial structure. In the end, he looked very different, unrecognizable unless someone knew what to look for. 

Given the fact that Tim didn’t exactly graduate high school or go to college and was literally only 17, he had to pass as an intern for Jared Kolasinski, the leader of the Human Resources division. 

With a mic strapped to his chest, he started his first day of work. 

“So you’re my new assistant, huh?” Kolasinski muttered disinterestedly. He was a tall man who towered at 6’2” who was on the verge of entering old age. His black hair was peppered with grey and his face was generally schooled into an unpleasant frown. “What’s your name boy?”

“Adrian Lee, sir” Tim responded. He mentally added it to the list of growing identities he had. Alvin Draper who?

“Okay, Adrian, go get me a coffee, cream and sugar and a spinach wrap from the cafe across the street,” he ordered. The man reached into the pocket of his suit and took a 20 out from his money clip and flicked it at Tim. It fell to the ground and he smirked. 

“Yes, sir,” Tim said crouching down and picking up the bill. 

He got the coffee and the wrap and brought it back, but his boss was so engrossed in a phone call with someone else that he was sent to go “make copies or something”. Tim ended up wandering to the copy room where there was an office worker refilling the machine. 

“Did you need something, hon?” the older woman asked warmly. “The things jammed right now, so you can’t make copies, I’m afraid, but if you need paper it’s right on that shelf over there. 

“Oh, no, I’m just Mr. Kolasinski’s new intern. I’m just finding my way around this place,” he answered awkwardly. 

Her smile flickered for a second , but she quickly recovered. “That Mr. Kolasinski is a tricky one. Really tough on his assistants so you be careful, you hear? Come find me- I’m Mary Topaz, if you need help finding anything else, okay?” 

He nodded and as she shuffled down the hall, he vaguely wondered about Ms. Mac and where she was now. 

In the room next door, Tim could hear Kolasinski wrapping up his phone call so he slipped back into the room quietly. The man faced the wall of windows that overlooked Gotham as he spoke into the phone. 

“Yes, yes I’ll send it to you. My people will be in touch. Goodbye,” and he ended the call. He swiveled back around and the slight widening of his eyes told Tim that he didn’t hear him come in. 

“I don’t remember saying you could come in, Adrian.”

Tim kept his face neutral. “I wanted to see if you need help with anything.”

“If you want to keep your job, you won’t listen in on my phone calls, you hear? I have important, classified information that doesn’t need be known by some random college kid who isn’t even paid.”

It took everything he had not to deck the man in the face right then and there. “Yes, sir.”

The rest of his first day was spent completing menial tasks with no real incident and he said so when he sat in front of the camera for the confessional. 

“He’s a jerk, but I don’t think it’s legal to fire someone with those grounds. But with that phone call, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on him,” he told the camera. 

The next day was even worse. It started off with Tim following a man who kept going in and out of the storage closet. Suspicious, right? When he went back in for the fifth time, Tim stood outside the door, ready to confront him about it, but when he cane stumbling out, with red eyes and a sniffle- well. That was different. 

Apparently, he’d caught his wife cheating the night before and he said so all while sobbing onto Tim’s shoulder. 

“It’s gonna be alright, man,” he said, patting his shoulder awkwardly. “It’s gonna be alright.”

It lasted until the man collected himself and wrapped Tim in an uncomfortably tight and long hug with a thank you and returned to his work. 

Then, there was a lost little girl in the lobby who would absolutely not let any security guard touch her and if they took a step towards her, she’d scream at top volume. It took Tim five minutes to coax her out of the corner, another five to stop her from crying as the second person fell apart on his shoulder, and another five to get a parents phone number. 

“Are you gonna be my new dad if mine doesn’t come back?” she asked earnestly. 

“What?” he said, panicked. “No, yours is gonna come back.” 

“What if he doesn’t?”

“He will.” 

He closes his eyes and punches the bridge of his nose- there’s a hell of a headache coming on- but images of a hopeful 13 year old boy with daddy issues on Bruce Wayne’s doorstep flashes in his mind so he opens them again. 

The third and fourth days aren’t so much better. He picks up a dog loose in the building, explains to an old hard of hearing man that this was not his hotel, and still ran every day tasks for Kolasinski. 

“I’m ready to slip into a coma,” he tells the camera. 

By the fifth day, his enthusiasm for being the Robin Hood fighting against capitalism has faded. He slips into Kolasinski’s office like he does every morning and accepts a list of tasks. Another young intern, quite pretty, comes by with a message and he doesn’t like the way the old man’s eyes travel down her body and after her as she leaves the room. 

So he gets the coffee, makes copies of memos, picks up his laundry, gets stuck in the elevator, then returned by lunch time to take his order. 

As he approached the office, complete with dragging feet and a slouch, he heard the unmistakable sound of glass shattering. And then a girls scream. 

That changed things. He rushed to the door, but didn’t open it. Instead, he peeked through the crack of the doorway. 

“Listen to me,” Kolasinski groused at the girl from earlier. “Don’t you know that girls never move up in the business unless they please their bosses? You should be thankful for this opportunity.” 

“Let go of me!” she screams and thrashes wildly but the grip on her wrist is strong. She picks up another glass ornament from the table to throw at him, but before she can react, he raised his hand and struck her across the face. 

The knick knack drops and is shattered. 

Tim bursts through the doors, anger and disgust coursing through his entire body. 

“Let go of her!” he yells, not able to stop his body from trembling with anger. 

Kolasinski’s eyes flash dangerously as he glares at Tim. “Didn’t I tell you not to stick your head in my personal business! I should teach other both of you not to mess with me.”

He raises his hand again to over the girl who shrieks and starts to cry. 

Tim feels everything go still for a moment. All he knows is the shaking anger in his hands and the blood rushing to his head. Then in a flash, he strides across the room and punches Kolasinski square in the jaw. 

The man stumbles back into his desk, clutching his face. He hisses. “You little shit! Do you know who I am? You shouldn’t have done that.”

“You shouldn’t have laid a hand on that girl,” Tim spat back. 

“What are you going to do, huh?” he sneered. “File a complaint? I’m the head of Human Resources. I can get rid of any file I want.” 

“Not just a complaint. You’re getting sued. This counts as harassment.”

“Oh yeah?” Kolasinski laughed. “You’re the one who just punched me. I could sue you and you’d land in a penitentiary. You’d never see daylight again.” 

“Trust me, if anyone’s going to jail it’s you.” 

“I have friends more powerful thank you think and I can pay for the best lawyers in Gotham. Who do you think you are?” 

“Your contacts will be looked into. Your contact history will be searched by police. Every single employee and assistant you’ve had will be questioned. I can pay for the best lawyers in the world and you will be going to jail. Who am I? I’m Tim Drake Wayne, bitch,” he seethed, yanking off the wig. 

A few days after the episode aired, he received a call. 

“Yes, Jason?”

“You just dragged a guy on my television.”

“Hm.”

“Good job.”

“Thanks.”


End file.
